


The Hunt Begins

by MizuLeKitten



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Cryptid Keith, Gen, Off Trail Hiking, Orphan Keith (Voltron), POV Keith (Voltron), POV Pidge | Katie Holt, Socially Awkward Keith (Voltron), Sort Of, Wolf Pack, who doesn't know he's a cryptid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 16:13:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16308485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MizuLeKitten/pseuds/MizuLeKitten
Summary: Keith's lived with his pack for awhile now. He can't remember the last time he's visited a town. Not that it matters. He's happy with his pack.Pidge needs a break from her programming and robots, and decides that hunting down the Northern Mist and its Keeper is a good way to spend her summer. Of course, she drags Hunk and Lance along for the ride (because if she's being forced to camp, she's having her two friends suffer with her.)It doesn't take long for them to meet, but will they even realize that Keith is who they're looking for, and will Keith find out why someone screamed?





	The Hunt Begins

Keith sighed the noise reverberating through their summer den. It was’nt too hot in the cave, springs from below keeping the space cool despite the heat rising outside. It was why he and his pack picked this spot for the summer den. It simply made sense. After all, dark coats made the heat _unbearable_ . Joy nearly passed out from a early hunt not even a few days ago. He rolled his eyes at the memory. Riri had _told_ them not to hunt during the high sun hours, but Joy had been _adamant_ about hunting down that _one_ rabbit.

Idiot.

Lovable idiot but idiot all the same.

The heat outside wasn’t a problem, nor was the coolness inside. No. It was all Keith. Normally, he was good at keeping the same hours as his pack. He'd always been a night owl, but the shift from their winter schedule to their summer one was proving harder to adapt to this time around. It wasn't a _real_ problem, but it was still annoying. He should have adapted by now, but _no_. His body wasn't having it. Times like these made him wish he was a true wolf like his pack.

True wolf being relative. He knew that wolves like these weren't what people _typically_ thought of when they imagined wolves. No, his pack were ghostly, mist like apparitions, with rows of sharp teeth on the back of their necks. Despite the smoke they put off, they were still fun to cuddle, a solid presence to hold onto, and pack cuddle sessions were a daily occurrence. Sometimes the mist they put off in waves was annoying, mainly when it got in his face. (It wasn’t as if he was innocent, his own smoke coming out occasionally from the mouth that had formed on the back of his own neck.) They were a good pack, though; they cared about him more than anyone else ever had.

He polished his knife, a heirloom from his urban days. It had been the last gift he ever got from his mother; the jacket on his shoulders, his father. They were both dead now, had been for a long time.

There was a reason he was living with with the pack.

Even though the things leading up to his pack were hard to swallow, memories he was keen to forget and never relive, he was happy here. The pack was as good as any family, their thoughts well in tune with his own. It was unnatural, but the whole situation was really. Not that he had any intention of _changing_ his situation. He was happy here, with Riri, with Joy, his pack. They were better than any human family that tried to adopt him.

A high pitch screech echoed through the forest, scaring the birds. Keith glanced towards his pack, still fast asleep with the sun high in the sky. They'd awake soon enough, as dusk began to settle. He wouldn't be missed.

A noise like that meant someone was probably lost, and probably _hurt_. Despite the injustices done to him by the humans he knew, he still made it his mission to escort them out of the woods. With that in mind, he pried himself out from under Grimal, rubbing their side and sending soothing thoughts towards them to keep them from waking.

He snatched his bag and made for the mouth of the cave. It wasn't like he was sleeping anyways.

~*~

"Really, Lance? It was a _frog_ ," Pidge rolled her eyes as she walked past her _still_ cowering friend. She swatted at the air, damning the pesky mosquitos that continued to assault her despite her two friends following behind. This mystery better be worth it.

"How was I supposed to know it was a frog! It snuck up on me! It could've been a venomous snake, or a spider, or _worse_ ," Lance rambled on behind her. Honestly, she thought _Hunk_ was supposed to be the paranoid one, not Lance.

"I mean, it _could_ have," Hunk said, and Pidge had to fight off the urge to snort, "it could have, and that would've been _bad_ , really bad, but at the same time... I don't think anything like that lives in these woods. Remember all the research we did? Nothing about venomous snakes or spiders, dude."

Lance crossed his arms with a huff, "whatever. It _could_ have happened, so that means my reaction was perfectly understandable."

Pidge ducked under a branch, turning back to watch the others, "sure, Lance. Sure.”

"Rude…” Lance held the branch out of the way for Hunk to pass before letting it snap back into place, “where are we going anyways?"

"We're searching for clues about the Northern Mist."

"Yeah, I know that, but like... _where_ in the woods are we doing this,” Lance threw his arms out as he turned in a circle, nearly tripping over a root if not for Hunk catching him. He simply smiled up at his friend before looking back to Pidge, “are we just scouring the whole place, or what?"

"Did you not listen when Hunk and I went over all of this?"  Pidge groaned, pinching her nose as she waited for them to catch up. For the one that hated nature the most out of their trio, she sure was hiking faster than them.

"No."

"At least he's honest?” Hunk said, the should be statement coming out more like a question. It was sometimes annoying how Hunk always tried to justify Lance’s actions, but a little bit of annoying was par for the course when she liked everything else about the guy. Minus the anxious rambling… She could do without that.

She shook her head, leveling Lance with an unimpressed stare that only got her a cheeky grin in return, "we're heading to campsite A for the night after we've set up the cameras over here. The cameras will be in spots that the Northern Mist have been spotted at before in hopes that they'll show up again. Tomorrow we go to campsite B and so on. Then I'll be able to watch all the feeds from the motel, and we can get out of the damn woods."

"For someone who hates the woods so much, you have a really weird hobby," Lance said as he walked by Pidge, ruffling her hair.

She punched his arm, frowning at the other, "hunting for cryptids isn't weird."

"Not what-,” Lance sighed, “I _meant_ that you hate nature, and hunting cryptids means nature."

"You _are_ talking to the guy that believes in mermaids," Hunk added.

"Believes? I _know_ they're real Hunk, they have to be."

"Can we _please_ -”

Lance slapped his hand over Pidge’s mouth, eyes wide as he looked over the area around them. “I saw something.”

Pidge rolled her eyes; if it was another damn frog...

Twigs snapped behind them, and Hunk went rigid, slowly turning to walk backwards, closer to Pidge and Lance, “uh, guys?”

Pidge tore Lance’s hand from her mouth, looking past her friends at… Green, and brown, and normal forest things.

“Did you hear that?” Lance whispered.

A flash of red, and Hunk squeaked, hunkering down behind Lance as his friend snatched a stick from the ground. As if that’d do any good. Pidge squinted into the foliage, the red might mean something. The Northern Mist had a “person” in red that traveled with them, seemingly a part of the pack despite looking human. The Mist also only came out at night, so...

No more noise, only the soft chirps of birds around them, and the fluttering of leaves in the breeze. It was probably a fox or something. Nothing major.

"Maybe... it went away?" Hunk poked his head around Lance..

"Just a fox," Pidge said with a wave of her hand, "woods, foxes, kind of go hand in hand."

She turned around, and screamed.

Her scream caused the other two to jump, Hunk falling back as Lance began to swear liberally in Spanish (barely dodging out of the way of Hunk's fall).

Standing a few yards in front of them was a boy around their age, clad in a weird red crop top jacket, and black shirt and leggings. He had a bag on, a water bottle on the side, and a flashlight on the other. Seemingly, another hiker. He tilted his head to the side, blinking innocently as if he _hadn't_ just scared the wits out of them all.

" _Dude_ ," Lance hissed, "what the cheese."

"Are you lost?" the guy asked instead of answering -- which, to be fair, it wasn't as if Lance wanted an actual answer.

Pidge let out a long sigh, chastising herself for getting spooked so easily. The guy _had_ snuck up on them though. Yeah, his fault. Totally. "Nah," she finally responded, "we're making our way to a campsite is all. Are you?"

The guy's brows furrowed as he let the silence stretch on. It was... unnerving to say the least.

"Then who screamed?" he asked in lieu of an answer again.

"That," Pidge grinned as she jammed her thumb back towards Lance, never one to pass up a chance to tease, "would've been this guy. Got scared was all --"

"Hey!"

"-- nothing to worry about."

"Oh."

“Where you heading?” Hunk piped up, finally having picked himself up off the ground, “maybe we’re heading the same way.”

The guy shrugged, “anywhere really.”

“So you _are_ lost,” Lance said with a grin, already starting some sort of stupid Lance competition with him. Pidge didn’t get it, Hunk didn’t either, and Matt and Shiro were always just as lost with the random competitions.

“I don’t get lost.”

“Sure, sure, whatever you say buddy.”

“But I don’t,” the guy’s tone didn’t even shift, either ignoring Lance’s jabs or not understanding them.

“Ignore him, name’s Pidge,” she held her hand out towards him, taking mercy on the poor guy and stopping the trainwreck that conversation could have ended in. “You?”

“Keith,” he looked down at her hand, and for a split second she wondered if he even knew what a handshake was. He took it after a few more beats of stretched silence, and shook it.

“The scaredy cat is Lance, big guy is Hunk.”

Hunk gave a small wave, smiling, while Lance huffed, “Hunk is way more of a scaredy cat than me.”

“He’s right, but I also didn’t screech at a frog,” Hunk nudged Lance in the side with a smile.

“One time! One time I slip up and that’s all you guys focus on!”

Pidge and Hunk snickered, and even Keith gave a small smile.

“Since you’re not heading anywhere, wanna head to our campsite with us?” Pidge asked.

Keith looked up at the sky, closing his eyes. He stood there for a moment before opening them, and giving a small nod, “sure.”

~*~

They stopped to set up cameras one last time before camp. It got them curious looks from Keith, and Pidge jumped on the chance to explain her newest obsession.

Cryptids were always fun to look at in her free time. She liked taking a break from equations and numbers (sometimes) to explore the “real” world, one where mysteries waited to be explored and explained with concrete evidence. She’d gone through the classics, Mothman, Nessie, the like, and now she’d found her way to the Northern Mist and their keeper.

“They’ve been spotted in these woods for nearly fifty years now. They travel with this wolf pack and they’re also _mist_ , so it’s really weird and awesome. They apparently haven’t aged a day and there’s no real good images of them besides this weird smokey substance surrounding them all. The townspeople have all these neat stories about them, though, and like run ins, and just,” Pidge grinned, “I _really_ hope we find them.”

Keith frowned beside her -- something she realized he did when he was thinking and not because he was displeased -- and shook his head, “I’ve never heard of anything like that, and I _live_ in the woods.”

“Really? You live here?”

“Yeah, with my family,” Keith held a branch back for Pidge, waiting for her to pass before following -- the dangers of off the path hiking, “we’ve never met someone like that.”

“How long have you been living here?”

“A few years,” Keith shrugged.

“Well maybe you’ve missed them,” Pidge pushed because she _really_ wanted this trip to be worth it.

All the other cryptids were iffy in their true existence. More rumors and photoshopped images than anything else. The Northern Mist though? This was no marketing scam, the townsfolk truly believed in them. While pictures were scarce, there were a few of a blob of red, surrounded by dark mist, and a scattering of eyes (gold, blue, green, brown, orange, two mismatched of blue and brown, and above the smattering of red, glowing purple eyes). The mist made it hard to see shapes, but one could make out the wolves, and the humanoid being that filled the red top with relative ease.

“Maybe,” Keith said, but the doubt was clear.

“Hey, you two,” Lance called from ahead of them, “stop talking and get over here so we can set up camp already.”

“You sticking around?” Pidge looked up at Keith. She liked the other’s company, even if they had only just met. She couldn’t say that about many people. For the most part, she really only liked Lance and Hunk out of everyone she ever met. Excluding her family and Shiro of course.

Keith looked up at the sky, eyes falling closed as he took a deep breath. Just like last time. She watched in intrigue as he tilted his head one way then another before opening his eyes as he let the breath out. “Yeah, I got time.”

~*~

“You _have_ to try Hunk’s cooking, man,” Lance said from his camp chair. They had finished setting up camp (taking a bit longer than necessary due to none of them _actually_ knowing how to set up a tent), “it's to die for. There’s no way I’d make it through life without it.”

“I’m, uh, not that hungry,” Keith said, eyes looking anywhere but at Lance.

“Bullshit,” Pidge said as she sprayed _another_ layer of bug spray over herself, “We’ve been walking for ages. Eat.”

“I, uh,” Keith grimaced at that, hand coming up to rub at his neck, “gotta go anyways.”

“What? No way, dude!” Lance surged forward with a frown, “you _have_ to stay for food.”

Keith shuffled in place, “Riri is going to get worried and so are the others..”

“Who’s Riri?” Lance’s eyes lit up, and Pidge could already _sense_ the flirt in him straining to come out.

“My sister,” Keith continued on, oblivious to what he was potentially unleashing, “She’s going to wake up soon, so I should, ya know, go…”

“Dude, it's nearly sun down, shouldn’t she be _going_ to bed _._ ”

“Hey. I can respect a night owl,” Pidge said as she flopped down in her camp chair beside Lance.

“That’s because you _are_ one.”

A howl, carried through the wind and the trees to their ears, brought their conversation to a halt.

Hunk looked up from his cooking, their gazes meeting in a pool of excitement, “do you think that was-”

“It has to be. Where did it come from,” Pidge rushed to her bag, digging through for the maps, “maybe we can pinpoint it and set up cameras there, and…”

“Uh, guys,” Hunk interrupted her ramble, “where’d Keith go?”

Pidge looked up and around. There was no sign of him. It was as if he was never there. The same howl from before sounded, this time joined by several others.

And then they all froze as a final howl joined the mix, this time closer, not far from camp. As if the wolf had just left them. As if…

Pidge looked to the others, eyes wide as her mind wound a mile a minute. “Did we just meet the Northern Mist’s keeper?”

**Author's Note:**

> Philemal accidentally fueled this au, and then Blob helped me flesh out the wolves on accident so we'll probably be coming back to this au a bit while I still got the momentum
> 
> If you have any questions about the au or just in general, come on over to me tumblr: [MizuLeKitten](https://mizulekitten.tumblr.com/)  
> I don't bite -- Promise


End file.
